


The Wendigo

by twistedspindle



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23874976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedspindle/pseuds/twistedspindle
Summary: Upon an irradiated wasteland under a blanket of nuclear snow stood a small shed housing a mother, father, and their babes. On one eventful day, something horrid happened, only sending the poor family down a spiral of madness and death, reads like something from an entry in Grimm's Book of Fairytales.
Kudos: 1





	The Wendigo

Part I:

Once upon a time, there was a destitute family living in the woods. It was a devastating winter, with meters of snow every day. That family had a father who had his wife and seven babies. The firstborn was a single child, then came twins, then another single, then finally triplets. They lived in a rickety shed infested by eight rats: a mother and seven babies, but the family could not eat them because the rodents burrowed themselves within the brittle walls. So, to provide for their family, the father went hunting or fishing each day, bringing barely enough for their family to scrape by during the winter.  
One day, the father was mauled by a bear when hunting, and the mother became very sad and wept for many days over her husband’s grave. The eldest child, a boy who was three years of age, said to his mother that he was going to hunt for the family when he grew up. He was going to be big and strong, just like his father once was. This made the mother cry even more as she told her sweet child, “O, my dear son, I don’t know if we will live until then.”  
The next day, because there was not enough food to provide for the babies, one of them became very sick from the cold. To protect the other children from the illness, the child had to die in order to not spread the disease, so mother wept for many more days when the foul deed was committed.  
That night, when the mother watched over her babes, she saw the family of rats come out of the hole in the wall. The mother rat dragged out a sick child and killed the small rodent. The mother rat then whined and squeaked and the rest of the babies came to the scene. Then the family of rats began to feast upon the dead rodent’s flesh in order to provide for them. Horrified by the crime, mother chopped off the heads of the rat family and cast their corpses into the dying fire. The idea of eating her deceased child deeply troubled the poor woman, until the following morning.  
The next morning, she fed the children the family of cooked rats, and all was good for the next six days, one rat cut into seven for each day. But as the food slowly diminished, the haunting memory slowly began to seep into mother’s mind. The dead child’s body still lay limp in the snow, untouched by nature.  
Then on the seventh day, the family once again ran out of food, and hunger began to set in over the following day. Now, the eldest child had fallen ill, and the mother’s withered mind tore at her crooked last resort. After so many days of emotional burden, after so many days of the cold painstakingly chipping away at her stomach, she no longer wept. Her face had lost all expression, all expression but a long face with the edges of her mouth drooping down to her chin. Then, after being left no other choice, mother dragged her child’s decaying body into the fire.  
While the body slowly cooked to a crisp as she crouched in front of the furnace, the six children curled against the back of the shed, contorted with starvation. They shivered in the oppressive chill until their mother stood before them, and dropped an infant on the frozen floorboards. She cut off its head with the knife that decapitated the rats, then divided the babe’s head into seven pieces. Without a second thought, the children’s deprived brains feasted on the portions of their sister’s head, and they all lived for another week.

Part II:

There were no longer any humans within that shed, only empty shells of animals trying to live another day. No words were spoken over the course of that week. That week, they ate a portion of their sister once a day, to fill their jagged bodies of ashen skin on brittle bones. Piece by piece, the more human they ate, the less human they became. The triplets birthed before their father’s death had fallen ill over that week. The eldest son’s tattered mind began to weave a plan to save his family if the last two of the triplets died, a plan to survive until winter falls and the flowers bloom. Then something horrid happened.  
One of the triplets had succumbed to the cold, leaving one more infant left. Yet, unlike the week prior, no tears were shed, no weeping ripping through the quiet woods. Only the silent crackle of the fire, with the mother squatting before it, breastfeeding the last triplet. The eldest son, who’d now turned four years old, consulted his siblings and told them his plan.  
While his brother and sisters huddled together for warmth, he explained to them how when their mother is tending to the fire next time after the last triplet passes, he’ll push her in. They won’t have to worry about the babies being fed because they’ll all be dead, and mother will be enough to keep them alive until spring. The siblings could barely understand what he was saying as they were only one or two years old. He then heard a crash behind him as he swiveled around on his frost-bitten feet.  
Another charred infant lay on the floor before him. Although his heart told him not to feast on the deceased sibling, his stomach tore through his heart-strings and devoured the sixth of his baby brother’s head. Then they lasted another week, until, finally, five days later, the last of the triplets crumbled fore sickness and joined its brother and sister in the fire. That night, the babes crawled from the back of the shed. Their muscles weak from starvation, they dragged themselves toward the empty shell tending the fire. One by one, they all grasped onto their mother who spun around to face them.  
Her eyes seemed like glass marbles with a fiery gaze of a bear behind them. Her pallid frost-bitten skin clung to her skill like leeches to a swollen stomach. Her hair was so frozen and dry, it was a mat. Her clothing was but a tattered cloth on a birdcage wrapped with rotting leather. All these horrid things did not phase the four siblings, as they painfully shoved their decrepit mother into the flame, but to no avail.  
Their mother shot up and wrapped her fingers around a child’s brittle arms and with a violent hiss, swung the shriveled girl into the fire. Her screams swallowed the roar of the flame, but the last three babes still pursued their mother. Then, from inside the flame, the girl’s melting hand jerked the mat of hair into the fire, and the mother spun to face hell.  
She’d spun to see with her own eyes her child, her daughter, her baby’s eyes dribbling down her crisp cheeks. The sudden horror of reality quickly tore through the mother’s vocal cords, and her shriek made the rickety shack tremble and echo through the hollow forest. It had been done; it was finally over. The last three siblings toppled backward and sat on the floor, their eyes mesmerized by the fire burning with all ferocity. There they lay for hours, hazing at the glory of the blaze.


End file.
